Defining Happiness

Few days ago I was contacted by an old friend, whom I met online asked me to come back to the online platform we met for the sake of old times. We talked for quite long and catching up with how our lives going. To the point where we talked about happiness.

You see, when we try to define an idea of feeling or emotion, despite we have the grasp of what it is, it may vary from people to people. Sure you can look into dictionary and see the definition, but when you ask people directly without access of dictionary, they will think for a bit. Which is kind of weird since feelings or emotions are things that are essential to human.

Our mood and experience affect the definition we will come up with. Which is something I find really interesting. So when we try to define happiness, we take turns to define what it is. So here is what one of my friend came up with:

“Happiness is a state when you make peace with yourself, especially mentally.”

I was surprised by her definition, because it came nowhere close to mine. Also it’s really good definition, because I have no objection on it. Then it’s my turn:

“Happiness is the ability to be grateful.”

Now I thought I have quite good definition on happiness, because the more grateful you are the more happy you will be, but my friend argue that even though being grateful is a great thing, it would lead to over-positivity or what she called toxic positivity. I honestly didn’t think it that way, but now that it comes to it, there might be truth in what she said.

But when is being too grateful become harmful?

Well, we agreed that being grateful is feeling enough with what we have and always look on the positive side. In this quite harsh world being too grateful will make you an easy prey and a “heartless” hunter. On the prey side, you will be used by people because well, your positive view on people. No matter how bad things go for you, you won’t feel cheated, used, or disappointed. This is harming to yourself, because it seems like you can’t stand up to yourself. And that is wrong, you will be humiliated and somehow it’s as if you’re a hollow doll. Now on the other spectrum, being “heartless” hunter here meant you’re blind to one’s feeling. It’s as if you’re lack of empathy. The simplest example is telling a suicidal person to not give up or be positive on their life. And this is what my friend meant by toxic positivity. It gave the opposite effect towards them. Being positive is a good thing, but since you’re too grateful you don’t see what’s wrong when people suicidal or being depressed. And again, it’s as if you’re a hollow doll.

While we’re talking about toxic positivity, my other friend asked:

If you’re too grateful does it mean you don’t have ambition?

Well, ambition comes in different flavors. It could be short term like the basic needs and long term like dream or life goals. So we kind of agreed on that and moved on to which definition is the best.

So on this point I guessed that being grateful is a good thing as long as it’s balanced. Somehow we agreed that grateful is one of many ways to achieve peace within one self.

But what about other ways?

We think for quite long, because we’re sure there must be another way to find peaceful mental state. Then I came up with acceptance. Sometimes people can’t find peace because they can’t accept reality or what happened in the past. Like blaming yourself on things you have no control over, or hiding something you find really damaging to your reputation. Once you cross the barrier you made, either you accept what happened or face the truth, you will find peace. So yeah there are other ways to find peace within one self. But those are the only things we could come up with.

In the end, we agreed that:

“Happiness is indeed a mental state when you make peace with yourself, that could be reached by lots of ways.”

Thank you for reading, if you have another way to reach peace with yourself or you disagree with what I wrote, please tell me, because I would like to know!